AUG 22: Sherman is Promoted

Lt. General William T. Sherman. (Credit: Library of Congress)

On August 22, 1866, Major General William T. Sherman was elevated to the rank of Lieutenant General. With this promotion, Sherman assumed command of the Military Division of Missouri, which encompassed the entire U.S. Army west of the Mississippi River. 

During the Civil War, Sherman drew acclaim for executing the Union’s “March to the Sea” in December 1864, which destroyed huge amounts of southern agriculture and private property from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. Sherman intended to make war so horrible to civilians in the south that their collective spirit and support for the Confederate cause would be broken.

Sherman’s job in the West was to use the U.S. Army to protect the transcontinental railroad and secure mining interests in territory traditionally owned and settled by Native Americans. The plan was to force Native Americans onto reservations, seize their land and protect the settlers who moved there. In a series of campaigns now known as the western Indian Wars, the military clashed with, and ultimately annihilated, tribes intent on protecting their lands and their way of life.

 In December 1890, U.S. Army troops killed approximately 300 Lakota people, including women and children, near Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. With it came the end of armed Indian resistance.